Harassment and stalking of Members of the United Kingdom Parliament: associations and consequences

A survey concerning intrusive/aggressive behaviours towards MPs was administered at Westminster, and in Queensland, New Zealand and Norway. Follow-up interviews were conducted with a sample at Westminster. This paper examines the experiences and associations of the 239 Westminster responders, of whom 81% had experienced intrusive/aggressive behaviours, 18% been subject to attack/attempted attack, and 53% stalked or harassed. Being stalked and subject to certain types of intrusive/aggressive behaviour were associated with younger age and being in the Commons five years or less, but serious incidents were more common in those who had been MPs for longer. There were no associations with brief periods of harassment. Some differences with party and constituency type emerged. Mental illness was prominent amongst perpetrators. Motives predominantly concerned personal grievances. Significant proportions of MPs suffered psychological ill-effects, necessitating inconvenient behaviour changes. Internal consistencies in these results and similarities to other sites are explored, and their implications discussed.     

‘Cashing In’ on curiosity and spectacle: the forensic patient and news media

Health and social care professionals are gatekeepers to, and custodians of, confidential service user information. In the United Kingdom (UK), police investigations have unveiled cases of payments being made to public service officials by journalists in return for service user information. The purpose of this discussion is to investigate such cases in the context of high-security forensic care. This paper provides a discussion drawing upon two UK-based case studies of prosecutions of public service workers relating to the sale of confidential information. The analysis presented here illuminates upon the salient and connected issues at work that have led to the transgression of legal obligations and professional responsibilities/principles of confidentiality. A fuller reading of the context in which these transgressions occur, and motivations that exist, may well serve to inform policy, training, guidance or vigilance in relation to the preserving of service user information in the future.     

Transpersonal consciousness in elicitive teaching

ABSTRACT

In this article I explore the role of transpersonal consciousness in Peace Education. Following the framework of transrational peace philosophy, I discuss the dynamics between the spiritual and policitary layers and their relevance in preparing for elicitive teaching, curriculum design, and developing pedagogical approaches. I use my personal experiences in elicitive peace education to elucidate opportunities for the practical application of transpersonal consciousness in the classroom. This article concludes that in Peace Education, engaging with the transpersonal layer supports deeper transformations within and beyond the classroom that includes shifting of personal awareness and deepening of perspectives, as well as the capacity for the group to become a resource for learning.     

Work Impairment and Disability in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Review and Recommendations for Psychological Injury Research and Practice

Work impairment and disability are common consequences of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as reflected by significant rates of sickness absence, failure to return to work, and reduced work performance. Within the psychological injury field, the issue of work impairment and disability in PTSD often arises in workers’ compensation and disability insurance claims and in personal injury litigation. In this context, clinical and forensic practitioners are faced with challenges in rendering expert opinions on diagnosis, causality, prognosis, and recommendations for treatment and rehabilitation. To promote understanding of this important, yet understudied area, there are three aims of this paper: first, to review the current literature on work impairment and disability associated with PTSD; second, to draw on this literature to present a biopsychosocial framework of work impairment and disability in PTSD; and third, to offer suggestions for improving the assessment and management of PTSD-related work impairment and disability.     

Turkic poetic heritage as symbol and spectacle of identity: observations on Turkmenistan’s Year of Magtymguly celebrations

This paper presents one case study of state-sponsored cultural activities that occurred throughout 2014, Turkmenistan’s Year of Magtymguly, the 290th anniversary of this Turkmen poet’s birth. Such activities constitute examples of public culture; they can organize representations of a society’s past and present to reaffirm for participants the values and power structure of their society and revalidate its philosophical underpinnings. After examining this Turkic poet’s iconicity, this paper compiles 2014's celebratory events from disparate sources, complementing broader general literature on Central Asia’s spectacles of public culture and their role in nation-building and identity-formation. Rather than merely resulting from any top-down decision specifying required activities nationwide, the year’s events involved numerous synergies as artists, museum and theater administrators, composers, and other cultural-sector workers benefited by responding to the potential of aligning their work with a theme as broad, as widely appreciated, and as eligible for various forms of support as this one. In addition, Turkmenistan’s strong central leadership benefited from this widely shared and highly visible celebration, especially emphasizing one element within Magtymguly’s eighteenth-century vision, an end to his people’s tribal conflicts within a unified Turkmenistan under one leader.     

Neoliberalism: From New Liberal Philosophy to Anti-Liberal Slogan

In recent years, neoliberalism has become an academic catchphrase. Yet, in contrast to other prominent social science concepts such as democracy, the meaning and proper usage of neoliberalism curiously have elicited little scholarly debate. Based on a content analysis of 148 journal articles published from 1990 to 2004, we document three potentially problematic aspects of neoliberalism’s use: the term is often undefined; it is employed unevenly across ideological divides; and it is used to characterize an excessively broad variety of phenomena. To explain these characteristics, we trace the genesis and evolution of the term neoliberalism throughout several decades of political economy debates. We show that neoliberalism has undergone a striking transformation, from a positive label coined by the German Freiberg School to denote a moderate renovation of classical liberalism, to a normatively negative term associated with radical economic reforms in Pinochet’s Chile. We then present an extension of W. B. Gallie’s framework for analyzing essentially contested concepts to explain why the meaning of neoliberalism is so rarely debated, in contrast to other normatively and politically charged social science terms. We conclude by proposing several ways that the term can regain substantive meaning as a “new liberalism” and be transformed into a more useful analytic tool.

Patterns of electoral corruption in Peru: The April 2000 general election

In 2000 Alberto Fujimori became president of Peru fora third consecutive term via an election process of dubiouslegality. This article details the variety of underhand andfraudulent manoeuvres employed by Peru's ruling clique as itstrove to ensure that the regime maintained itself in power. Itopens with a review of the thinking behind the government's long-term national development strategy, before outlining itscontroversial behaviour during the election campaign,irregularities occurring on polling day, as well as when voteswere being counted.     

The NASA/Florida Minority Institution Entrepreneurial Partnership: An Infrastructure to Enable Technology Transfer to Small Businesses

The NASA/Florida Minority Institution Entrepreneurial Partnership (FMIEP) represents a new infrastructure for technology transfer based on an alliance between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)-Kennedy Space Center (KSC), the Technological Research and Development Authority (TRDA), and four Minority Institutions in the State of Florida. This paper describes this partnership, their key activities, and some of the initial results accomplished. The NASA-FMIEP was developed in order to assist in the technological advancement of small businesses through the support of existing federal programs. Many of these programs are underutilized, particularly by small and minority-owned businesses. One of these programs aims to transfer advanced NASA technologies to the private sector. The FMIEP supports Kennedy Space Center by identifying new potential markets for technologies developed at the Center and by developing innovative information technology applications necessary to support the efforts of technology transfer. In addition, the FMIEP';s business thrust includes assisting Kennedy Space Center in promoting the participation by small business in the Technology Outreach Program and the Small Business Innovation Research Program. To date, one NASA technology has been successfully commercialized, seven hundred businesses have been made aware of these federal business-assistance programs, and four companies received important assistance that enabled them to become SBIR winners.